I kind of like the idea. What it does is forces us to change the way we think about technology. It is simply no longer 'just support to ministry', because ministry 'goes on in the real world'. Technology is a part of communication and relationships. It is now a fundamental part of ministry.

I think many churches need to wake up and stop putting technology into the 'that's nice but it doesn't really matter' camp.

At a church planting conference here in Hobart in early February, Bill Bosker a pastor of Kingston Christian Reformed Church and amember of the CRCA Theological College Committee, shared some thoughts:

Strengths

Efficient form of knowledge transfer.

Good context for indepth focus, especially for history, systematics and language study.

Reminder that we need pastors who think theologically about their ministry.

An aid for wider denominational cohesion.

A good context for mentoring.

Exposure to different models of ministry.

Weaknesses

Someone may do well in at theological college but be lousy at ministry.

Stu has been blogging about preaching. He has recently blogged about Pete Woodcock. You really must take the time to listen to some Pete. Here's a couple of sermons from the 2006 Tasmanian MTS Challenge Conference:

What happens when you downplay or ignore the Ascension is that, basically, the church expands to fill the vacuum. If Jesus is not someone other than the church – while of course at the same time being present with his people through his Spirit – then we have created a high road to triumphalism of the worst kind.

I will also be seeking to raise $100 000, both for my stipend and for strengthening the ministry across the board. I think we need really good quality materials, administrative support and a future staff fund all in place.

I pray that some of you will join in partnership with me by praying and giving financially... or point me in the direction of visionary and generous people who might be interested in finding out more about what we're up to.

This, he says, is ritual reinforcement, it is the setting of boundaries and the establishment of who's in and who's out.

The church community which tends towards this subtext doesn't actually want to be taught, changed and challenged. Instead they want to be reminded again of what they already believe. They want the jargon. They want the familiar. They want the critique of the outsider.

I've come to admit that I'm just not a 'chat to people in the shops and on the street' guy. I just don't enjoy it, can't motivate myself to do it. To keep trying, I think, will just produce more guilt, failure and avoidance. There's plenty of time in 'following up church contacts' and non-Christian friendships:

Cold contact/community surveys - 5 hours

Fliering/letterboxing/phonecalling - 2 hours

Investing in non-Christian friendships - 3 hours

Following up church contacts/running evangelistic courses - 3 hours

Cultural involvement - 2 hours.

To be honest, I'm pretty lousy at followup too. I can easily waste a good opportunity by not being prompt in following it up. I need to pray for God's wisdom and strength to be more focused on this one. It's awful isn't it? God opens a door and I do nothing about it :-(

With all of this stuff, you need to resolve to do it weekly, even daily. And if you don't act on it, your life gets full of stuff. Good stuff. Ooze of ministry meetings and stuff. You gotta keep sharp. And God gives us grace to serve him and brings blessing to other despite our weaknesses.

I love the humble clear-headedness of Carson's limitations to the reach of The Gospel Coalition:

But when it comes to overseas chapters, we won't do that. I'm sure that in due course there will be The Gospel Coalition Network: Czech Republic. But we don't want to go in that direction. First, we don't want to project one more instance of American hegemony. Second, we realize that institutionally we're pretty committed not only to knowing the gospel well, but also to thinking through how to articulate it here in our space and time.

How on earth can we possibly have the pomposity to claim that we know how to do it best in Hong Kong? We recognize that those things are going to have to emerge from those areas. (from Christianity Today)

What happens to the macho value system when the husband converts to evangelical Protestantism?

The answer? He swears off the traditional masculine vices like drinking and partying most of the weekend and reintegrates himself into the household. He assumes the role of husband and father he may have neglected since the early days of his marriage and participates actively in the church community.

For many men, no longer having to maintain the facade of unrelieved masculinity and bravado is a great relief; the private world of household and loved ones is preferable to the public world of men.

The homoousian asserts that God is eternally in himself what he is in Jesus Christ and therefore, that there is no dark unknown God behind the back of Jesus Christ, but only he who is made known to us in Jesus Christ. (T. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, p. 135)

I'm positive about multi-site. Our church is multi-site. But I'm not positive about video-venues. To be honest, I'm not even particularly positive about preaching the same sermon over and over again at separate services.

At Crossroads we preach different sermons, with different preachers. Even when Crossroads first moved to three services, I prepared and preached three sermons myself.

In this video, from Exponential Conference, Ed Stetzer and Al Hirsch share some concerns with multi-site. My favourite comment:

It's easy to create a new venue. It's hard to create a new Andy Stanley.

There's a Bible study @ James Burleigh's house that been started by keen young Christian blokes that goes for hours, involves eating a variety of made-from-scratch curries and being spiritual honest with one another.

I've heard that there's a crew of the sons-of-evangelical-leaders in Sydney, including Al Stewart's kid, Rob Smith's kid and Simon Manchester's kid who are also firing each other up and getting angry at everything.

You would need to start with 10 of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these 10 in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with children. Their job would then be twofold: to 'pastor' their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer, and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same.

1. Check email sparingly. Three times a day, max.5. Keep email replies short. 6. Automate the repetitive. Use a program like TextExpand to speed up typing regular phrases.8. When you are replying to emails, just do that, not several other things.

Thorough consultation with the church about its strengths and weakeness.

Ongoing external coaching for the church leadership.

Monthly minister clusters for ministers to talk through these issues with each other.

I think these are excellent ideas. And honestly, one of the big reasons we don't do this is because we are so defensive of our ministries and don't want to be critiqued by anybody.

It's that very defensiveness that makes me dislike Andrew's suggestion that a denomination imposes such a structure on the church. Many would simply resent it. Others would be oppressed by inappropriate 'clusters'.

Rather, this is something that ministers should pursue for themselves. It is lousy how people who have experienced the value MTS or some other internship before Bible College fail to pursue ongoing mentoring after college. Lousy and irresponsible.

During our meeting in Melbourne on Friday, we discussed some things that would be important to ensure the health of the Oz 29 movement:

Beginning slowly and establishing strong foundations in both shared theology and also shared ministry mind. Especially because the founding team are pulled together from different places, we mustn't take a shortcut here.

Building good relationships with denominations and other networks. We are not wanting to set up a denomination, so we need to make sure that we can point new churches in the direction of organisations that will help them with infrastructure, legal necessities, church discipline, mediation and other things.

We had a meeting in Docklands, Melbourne at Guy Mason's place. We didn't eat Maccas with Guy, but we did eat some Timtams and some very good pizza. Was a good meeting, firming up our longterm vision, familiarity with one another and plans for the next few months.

And I think we may have figured out a name. But I'm not telling you... yet.

Hope you are planning to join us in Melbourne and/or Sydney for the launch of this church planting network - week of November 30, 2009.